"Not Happy"

On the 30th September, I had to bring my very frail, 94 year old father for an appointment at the ENT department. Once in the hospital, the care was superb but my complaint refers to getting into the hospital. There used to be 10 much needed spaces for the very old or disabled in hospital cars. That has been reduced to a totally inadequate 5 due to a breast screening van,used by the reasonably mobile. That seems to have been there for at least 2 months. I also learnt by accident that visiting nurses are also told to park in the hospital car spaces. To add insult to injury, there were no wheelchairs inside the outpatients' entrance and also no one at the help point. I had to wait for over 10 minutes before a wheelchair was returned while worrying in case my Dad had left the car and tried to get into the hospital by himself, thinking he was going to be late for his appointment. There must be better provision for the very old or disabled who use your hospital and need to be close to the entrances and also more wheelchairs provided. the staff and care inside is usually excellent, but please make it easier for the very old, frail or disabled to get into the hospital. Moving that large breast screening van would certainly be a start. Leaving patients in the entrance while going off to park the car does not work if the patient is likely to wander off.

Responses

Thank you for taking the time to leave this posting. We are pleased to hear that you had a good experience of our clinical services in our ENT department but are very sorry to hear of the challenges you faced when trying to attend the clinic. We agree that the experience you describe is not acceptable and appreciate that this must have caused you stress and frustration. We have forwarded this feedback to our facilities managers and asked them to review the parking spaces available for those with access difficulties and to ensure that these are not compromised by visiting services. We are also conducting a review of the wheelchair availability and the welcome support at all our entrances to ensure that we have sufficient wheelchairs and an effective process in place for replacing them throughout the day. Attending appointments at hospital is stressful enough without the barriers you experienced and we would like to offer our sincere apologies. We trust that the changes we are putting in place will ensure that any future visits are a much more positive experience.